American Sign Language 2B

This is the second course of the second year of ASL courses. The course continues to focus on useful communication that students should be able to carry out in ASL. Students study the basic signs and phrases, techniques, and cultural nature of the language. This course introduces the students to the new concept of conceptually accurate signing that places emphasis on awareness of differences between ASL and English. Lesson topics shift from the everyday interaction in one’s immediate environment to interactions in the community to help students to build signing skills for obtaining and providing information rather than simply exchanging information. To support students build conceptual accuracy, the lessons stress ASL classifiers; students will be challenged to receptively identify some of the most common classifiers in contexts, and to apply them in their own signing. As a part of culture learning, students will continue to learn more facts about the Deaf culture as well as current and past challenging social issues. The signing videos will be all “voice off” to help develop students’ receptive skills without reading lips. Students will be asked to use various media tools including online resources, online dictionaries, a web cam, and the web-based Video Notes tool in Brightspace in order to record their performance in assignment submissions throughout the course. Students will be producing their own signing videos to demonstrate their learning. The goal of this course is to help utilize the fundamental ASL skills and knowledge into simple interpersonal and social interactions.